Google THIS!
Google has done it now.
Bloggers beware, SPAMmers rejoice.
CNN reports today, via the Associated Press, that Google has just created a special search feature just for blogs called, likely as it may seem, Google Blog Search. "Find blogs on your favorite topics"!!! (FYI, Google bought Blogger two years ago and is the host of all "blogspot.com" blogs).
I didn't know about this until I noticed a new wave of SPAM hitting the comments section of various blog posts of mine, new and old, all carefully crafted to entice the blogger starved for positive strokes..."nice blog...", "glad I read this...", and even "I'm not selling anything..."
At least it's not as bad as getting calls at home, but it still stings a bit. Really, lots of us bloggers ARE starved for constructive comments, and now comes this wave of stuff many of us will have to peer at. Even though I'd like to see my comments numbers going up, it's still quality not quantity that counts. So I, for one, will be removing every comment I determine to be SPAM.
As for other comments, btw, I don't cut out any of them, positive or negative. I do believe in free speech - and the freedom to proove oneself worthy of any adult conversation or a fool as the case may be - and often seems to be.
I do hope that Google Blog Search will bring more "real" readers to my rather esoteric neck of the blogosforest. So tell all your friends to try it out and see how it works. Search some esoteric keywords, and see what you come up with.
Meanwhile, SPAMmers go home.
posted by Lawrence @ 9:44 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hi, I was just checking out blogs and found yours...nice. My site is a little different and deals with pro ana pro suicide glad i saw your site
Arctic Folly
By Jimmy Carter
Congress is about to make one of those big decisions that marks an era. Unless wiser heads prevail, it may do it badly - making the
wrong decision in the wrong way and about the wrong place. At stake is America's greatest wildlife sanctuary, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To dissuade Congress from this environmental
tragedy, Americans must rally, and quickly.
Congress had its Pyrrhic energy victory this summer, with a new energy policy that ignores much-needed conservation measures and gives the oil industry large new tax breaks regardless of where it
drills and pumps. Surely Congress has done more than enough to increase the profits of the oil industry. Yet now, in a separate decision, the White House and Big Oil are
pressuring Congress to allow drilling rigs to rip into the ecological
heart of America's preeminent wildlife sanctuary. We must not confuse
this with Prudhoe Bay, which lies west of the Arctic refuge and is
already an industrial landscape resembling Houston more than
Yellowstone.
With increasing gasoline prices bringing economic hardship and
concern to many Americans, we must not be misled by oil lobbyists who
are trying to convince us that our energy security is singularly
dependent on sacrificing the Arctic refuge. They promote the false
premise that development will touch just a few thousand acres when,
in fact, it would introduce roads and pipelines spider-webbing across
hundreds of thousands of acres on the fragile coastal plain.
We cannot drill our way to energy security or lower gasoline prices
as long as our nation sits on just 3 percent of world oil reserves
yet accounts for 25 percent of all oil consumption. An obvious answer
is to increase the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles, at least to the
level we set more than a quarter-century ago.
Instead, the administration recently proposed a tiny increase in gas
mileage for SUVs, minivans and pickups. Not effective until the 2011
models, this would save about one month's current consumption of fuel
over the next 20 years - far less than will be saved in just one
state by a new California law. The new ruling offers automobile
makers an opportunity to avoid the reductions by modifying the size
of various models as they persist in manufacturing gas guzzlers. It
is not a coincidence that Moody's has just downgraded the debt of
General Motors and Ford to junk status, while makers of efficient
vehicles prosper.
I have been to the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge to study the wilderness wildlife. Far from being the frozen
"desert" some suggest, this is a rich, Serengeti-like haven of life:
nursery for caribou, polar bears, walruses and millions of shorebirds
and waterfowl that migrate annually to the Lower 48. To sit, as
Rosalynn and I did, watching a herd of musk oxen circle-up to defend
their young and then to find yourself literally in the midst of
thousands of caribou streaming by is to touch in a fundamental way
God's glorious ark of teeming wildlife.
We Americans use a lot of energy, and millions of us want to do so in
a more efficient way that also allows us to cherish our disappearing
wilderness heritage. In the Arctic refuge we cannot have it both
ways. In the next few months Americans could lose this special and
amazing place through a backdoor legislative maneuver.
Each fall Congress endeavors to combine budgetary directives covering
the nation's $2.5 trillion dollar annual budget in a single
"reconciliation" decision. In a tricky ploy to avoid full debate,
drilling advocates have buried their despoil-the-Arctic goal in this
mammoth measure. So, conservation-minded Americans must ask our
elected representatives to vote down any final budget reconciliation
bill that would allow the sacrifice of our Arctic sanctuary.
Now is the time to speak up for the ecological integrity of this
unsurpassed 18-million-acre wilderness. Many Americans will be in
Washington on Sept. 20 for the Arctic Refuge Action Day rally on the
Mall and to contact congressional representatives personally.
If we are not wise enough to protect the Arctic refuge, future
generations will condemn us for needlessly sacrificing the wilderness
of their world to feed our profligate, short-term and shortsighted
energy habit. The pathway to a better, more sustainable energy future
does not wind through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
[Former President Carter is the founder of the Carter Center in Atlanta.]
rfruth, at least your post isn't SPAM. Carter also just wrote a great op-ed piece about the Bush response to Katrina. (Carter started FEMA, and it was effective for several decades before being weakened/gutted/folded into Homeland Security.) That Carter piece was published, I believe, in USA Today and probably other national papers.
GROW IT YOURSELF!
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